Music is Therapy: At the Beach 2022
- Josh Jones
- Feb 19, 2022
- 10 min read
I have said that music is and always has been, will be a central point of emphasis for my life and brings so much beauty, knowledge, creation and pain, meaning. Music is a gift, music is an auditory masterpiece at times, a tragedy of noise and for me music is an escape and a rhythm to run away with. I also heard recently that music is the greatest therapy on earth. So true, and from there we have another great story. And medically speaking, music is therapy: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/8817-music-therapy
I recently took a trip to Mexico, to follow my favorite musicians, artists, The Avett Brothers, for a four day set of shows, vacation on the Riviera Mayan resort of the Hard Rock Hotel. This was my third trip to see The Avett Brothers and their ‘At the Beach’ festival, my second visit to Riviera Maya and about the 12 or 13th time I have seen The Avett Brothers live. They are without question the most talented act around today, the pure beauty in their music, the depths of their lyrics and connections to so many of us. But you have to really listen, attentively, to catch the full message and know their true greatness. As with most things, you have to slow down to fully understand, to process and to realize the moment you are in and what it means, can mean, where it can all go. For right or wrong.
While this vacation to Mexico was a nice getaway and rendezvous with other friends and a great band, the trip this time had so much more meaning for me. Unbeknownst to all around me, my wife, my family, my closest friends, coworkers, I had been in a very dark place for most of my life and was just coming out of it. I have a long ways to go, but I have hope and understanding, clarity of purpose and mission for the first time in my life. The entropy beast that has ravaged me, my mind, my physical being and others around me, is caged and put away. Up until late December, while we had all the arrangements booked from months ago, I knew there was no way I would ever make it to the show. I wanted to end my life and I was so close to executing that plan. And I know anyone who knows me would say that is impossible, but it is very possible, quite true and there are so many impossibilities we will detail that point to the main message in all this I am doing:
You or someone you know is deeply struggling with mental health, to the point where it can be life or death, and we all need to wake up and realize it. For those that struggle, there is hope and you can move forward, for those who can be allies and the rock that someone else can anchor to – don’t discard the significance of offering help, connecting with someone who you may think you know and has it all figured out.
Most are living on the edges, the extremes of life, pull them back to the center. Ok, that is my message about mental health, but in this story we will talk about music. So lets go there, lets enjoy the show. Ok, so I lied, this is about mental health and music. Nothing in life is singular, we’re all connected. Now that I was making the trip to The Avett Brothers At the Beach, I was feeling good, revisiting so many songs that now have such clear deeper meaning to me.
Walking over to the show for the Avett Brothers on night 1, I heard the Wood Brothers on the ambient speaker system by the pool and it brought me back to the same Avetts At the Beach event in 2020 from the Dominican Republic, our last moments of normalcy prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Wood Brothers, one of the side or opening acts, they were incredible in Dominican Republic. They spoke to me directly from the poolside speaker now, only this time I finally heard them in proper perspective – I was the luckiest man, never expecting to make it here back to Riviera Maya and back to see At the Beach. And I am happy for the first time, happiness Jones.
The Luckiest Man, Happiness Jones – two fantastic songs. You will never outrun or beat pain and suffering alone. And I know for sure I am the luckiest man, and now I am on the journey to truly be Happiness Jones, inside and out.
The lyrics from Luckiest Man:
I was thinking about ways not to lose I lay down my weapons is what I've done Too late to hide, feet too soft to run But people say I'm the luckiest man And yeah they say,
Running is useless and fighting is foolish You're not gonna win but still you're the luckiest man You're up against Too many horses and mysterious forces What you don't know is you are the luckiest man You're the luckiest man
I done talked to the devil when he calls my name But sometimes when I'm losing it all seems the same And when I fall I'm back up again Just to slip on the same mistakes and slide right back in But people say I'm the luckiest man And yeah they say,
Running is useless and fighting is foolish You're not gonna win but still you're the luckiest man You're up against Too many horses and mysterious forces What you don't know is you are the luckiest man You're the luckiest man
Try to keep my faith and keep my mind Hate to lose either one when the whip cracks behind And I can't help but mourning just a little each night People say everything is gonna be alright They say I'm the luckiest man And yeah they say,
The show on night 1 of the 2022 At the Beach festival introduced me to another unquestionably talented and powerful band, The War and Treaty. And in my state of true presence and attentiveness I was able to process a great story and message, far beyond hearing their beautiful music. Even more surprising to me was the emotion, talent and message – The War and Treaty. I could feel their place in my musical top 10 of all time secure from the first note. Another one of those coincidences that are anything but if you are present, attentive and aware as I now feel much more of my days.
The War and Treaty’s journey to hope from rolling stone, September 18, 2020
The War and Treaty: Tanya Blount Trotter and Michael Trotter.
Alysse Gafkjen
The headline – couple struggles through years of pain and trauma….Again I was shook. Again I felt I was not alone, another man with the courage to overcome his struggle.
The article, written by Alysse Gafkjen starts with an all too familiar angle:
When Michael Trotter sat down on the staircase inside his home in Albion, Michigan, one day in 2017, he was ready to end his life. Grappling with post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq, Trotter thought that maybe his life insurance policy could solve his wife and young son’s financial woes if he died. “I felt like I was the weight holding them back,” Trotter says. “I had failed, I guess, one time too many.”
Wow, no words from my speechless mouth and blank mind. Then I read on, their song 5 More Minutes – really was unquestionably their most powerful and resonating tune of the evening. And now I know why. “They have a kinetic energy about them that resonates” they have also found a way to defeat the laws of thermodynamics and entropy.
Distressed, Trotter’s wife and musical partner, Tanya Blount Trotter, called the police and tried to persuade her husband to hold on. “Michael, I know you have a plan to leave this world,” she told him, “but if you give me just five more minutes to love you, I promise I can make you staying in this world make sense.” Tears in his eyes, Trotter looked up at his wife and said, “OK.”
I would love to learn more of their process, their journey, and will over time. But I now know this, Tanya is Michael’s angel, the saving grace, the rock.
5 More Minutes, from their second album Hearts Town, has become The War and Treaty’s uplifting story of unquestioned bedrock partnership, of not ever giving up. From another Rolling Stone article, July 16, 2020 more of the story is highlighted:
“After years of falling in and out of financial and mental depression, I had finally had enough,” said Trotter, referring to the mental heath struggles and PTSD that followed his time as a soldier in Iraq in 2004. “I was ready to take my own life. But in my darkest moment, where I was ready right then and there to end it all, my wife Tanya asked one last thing of me: ‘Just give me five more minutes. Stay with me. Just five more minutes to love you.’ And something in her eyes, something in her hands convinced me to give her that five more minutes.”
The Trotter’s latest album, Healing Tide is their focus on that process and the rebound. Captivating. Our healing tide is rising, uplifting us together, on the same boat.
“I am living in that 5 minutes right now” We all are, whether we realize it or not, and we all have that opportunity daily to secure it for others beyond ourselves.
Trotter, a solider in the Iraq war, he saw external trauma and atrocities that impacted him with PTSD. While very different than my internal war and self-inflicted trauma, that is not the point, the impact and struggle is the point and commonality for which the remedies are not unique.
Michael Trotter said, “I remember one situation where a nightmare seemed so real that as a grown-ass man with children and a wife, I wet the bed” and the embarrassment he felt, something I also can identify with from my moment in the stairwell back in San Patricio. I nearly ended my life there, and I wet myself. And the nightmares, whether of the wakeful or sleeping variety, they can haunt us all, drive us to the brink.
There are many other songs with great meaning and resonate with me, and likely you, from The War and Treaty. So unexpected, as most great things are. As they were setting up the stage between The War and Treaty for the main event, Seth, Scott and the rest of the Avett Brothers band I was mesmerized by the crew working the area and putting everything in place. It wasn’t about the precious instruments that caught my attention, it was the 4 men working feverishly on setting the rugs in place for which the performers would stand. So meticulously they worked to have the rugs perfectly straight, flat, secured – as nothing is more important than the stability of the ground beneath you if you want to be able to deliver greatness. Which they did, and beyond.
I won’t go into all the songs from that night, I have a long list of items from that, but I will include two pieces here and then jump to another moment of power from the trip.
From the Avett Brothers night 1 At the Beach:
We have got to leave all that behind (At the Beach, album Mignonette 2004), then we all fall down (The Fall, album Four Thieves Gone 2006) – yes we have to leave the past behind and yes we all make mistakes, but have to continue marching forward and learning, growing.
On the third day, we listened to Langhorne Slim – we hadn’t seen him since 2018 here At the Beach in Riviera Maya. And like many of us, the past four years have had marked significance, on his physical state and deeper in a much more pronounced fashion that he shared as he began his set on the beach stage at about 3pm in the afternoon. Langhorne Slim, a singular figure looking out on the beach, the waves crashing beyond the reef, the calm lagoon filled with 600 listeners on floats, having drinks, living the moment. The beach and pool just to Langhorne’s right with a few hundred more lounging, at the pool bar, taking it all in. What a scene At the Beach, but for me Langhorne had a different stature, which soon was understood. I often say we are so fortunate, I mean it in so many different ways, one specific one here being that for our vacation we had an ocean-view suite, on the very edge of the resort, offering privacy and quiet when we wanted it. This also happened to be the building where the talent stayed, seeking the same retreat and peace when the bright lights of the stage were not upon them. It was during our 2018 stay, from that same building where we stayed, that we passed what looked to be a man in distress, significant distress, hunched over by the entrance to our building, dressed to the nines though with his white pants, boots, cowboy hat, etc. and next to him a bottle of whiskey half spilled and who knows where the other half had been; and momentarily he returned that whiskey to the earth in the flower bed wretching for a few minutes. He looked in bad shape, but was not accepting of any help or assistance, he was fine he said. And today, as the same troubled man began his set, Langhorne Slim had a different look to say the least and I know a different mentality based on the message he delivered. He also sounded much better than the wretching from our first encounter in 2018.
As Langhorne stepped up to the mic, he says sure and steady “The most divine medicine we have on earth is music”. He talked for about 2 or 3 minutes outlining his struggles with substance abuse, alcohol, depression and the fact that he is now 2 years sober, he has sought professional help, he has found his creativity again. He elaborated on the energy factor, maybe his own entropy issues, where for so long he was unable to connect with the audience during the pandemic and needed that to move forward. He acknowledged that many of us are struggling, and the agreement was deafening from the audience, and ended with the understanding and message that “we all need each other.” Bravo! Music to my ears and not a note played. As we left the beach stage I saw the James Clear book, Atomic Habits, half-buried in the powdery white sand, and it made me think back to some of the words from that book:
Maintain perspective. Your life is good and your discomfort is temporary. Step into this moment of discomfort and let it strengthen you.
Langhorne Slim, The War and Treaty, The Avett Brothers – greatness on so many levels. Thankfully I was in the moment, floating literally and figuratively, and not six feet deep in the ground. Music is a powerful thing, but the people around you create the true melody of life, the beats in your head, the rhythm that moves you.
I will close with one other of my notes from the Avett Brothers night 1 At the Beach:
Just do your best we only get so many days (When I Drink, album The Gleam 2006) – truly be in the moment, the day, the life we have before us.
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